HORSE RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : It’s Still Strub, but Series Is Just Not What It Was

Trainer Mel Stute can speak from experience about how tough it is to sweep the three-race Strub series at Santa Anita.

Stute went into the 1986-87 series with Snow Chief, the Preakness winner and champion 3-year-old colt of 1986, but he was unable to win the first two legs. He finished second behind Ferdinand in the Malibu Stakes and lost to Variety Road and Broad Brush in the San Fernando.

“Those first two races might have been too short for my horse, but then he won the big one,” Stute said.

In the 1 1/4-mile Strub, Snow Chief beat Ferdinand by a neck, for the last major victory of his career, with Broad Brush finishing third.

Those were the days. The Strub series brought together archrivals Ferdinand and Snow Chief, respective winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and when Broad Brush shipped to California from Maryland, Santa Anita got the horse that had finished third in both of those races, too. Even Variety Road, the California-bred, was no piker. He raced until he was a 9-year-old, retiring with just under $1 million in earnings.

This year’s Strub series is flimsy by comparison. From a thin crop of 3-year-olds--Prairie Bayou, who died because of injuries suffered in the Belmont Stakes, will probably be voted division champion--the seven-furlong Malibu on Dec. 26 had only one starter who ran in a Triple Crown race, and Sunday’s field for the 1 1/8-mile San Fernando is not any deeper. Diazo, fifth in the Kentucky Derby and winner by a half-length in the Malibu, will be favored, and other than River Special, a leading 2-year-old in 1982, the six or seven other starters are belatedly trying to build their reputations.

Mel Stute will have a horse in the field, and he figures that Bat Eclat’s chances are as good as anybody’s.

“I thought he ran a big race in the Malibu,” Stute said. “He closed a lot of ground. This race is longer and I think he’s capable of doing a lot better.”

Eight lengths behind and in last place after half a mile in the Malibu, Bat Eclat finished fourth, beaten by less than four lengths. The 3-year-old gelding, a California-bred like Snow Chief, has taken a left turn under Stute, returning to dirt for the Strub series after a campaign last year that was mostly on grass.

Bred and owned by Robert and Barbara Walter, Bat Eclat was sent to Stute last fall to run on grass in the California Cup Mile, but because of a technicality--he had been scratched by a veterinarian from a race at Bay Meadows the week before--he was not permitted to compete.

Two weeks after the Cal Cup, Stute ran Bat Eclat for an $80,000 claiming price at a mile on grass, and he won with a closing rush, paying $67.40. His time of 1:34 was the same as Megan’s Interco’s winning clocking in the Cal Cup.

Sticking to the turf, Bat Eclat won two allowance races before running in the Malibu, which was his first dirt assignment since last winter at Golden Gate Fields, where Noble Hay II did the training.

“We’re excited about his chances and we’ll be down for the race,” Barbara Walter said Thursday. The Walters own Vine Hill Ranch, a 550-acre spread 60 miles north of San Francisco, where Battonier, Bat Eclat’s sire, and their three other stallions stand, along with dozens of broodmares.

The Walters bought Battonier, winner of the 1978 Illinois Derby, for $60,000 from a Preston Madden dispersal, and from his first crop in California they got Charmonnier, who was 28-1 when he beat Best Pal, at 2-5, in the 1991 Cal Cup Classic at Santa Anita.

Like Bat Eclat, Charmonnier is a gelding. Barbara Walter said that her husband, despite being a prominent breeder, still gelds many of their horses because he believes that there is an oversupply of stallions in California.

“You’ve got to have a lot going for you to win important races,” said Robert Walter, who bought Vine Hill 10 years ago. “You need a superior horse, you need money and patience, and you’ve got to have all the luck in the world.”

Unlucky has been River Special, who won the Del Mar Futurity, the Norfolk at Santa Anita and the Hollywood Futurity in 1992, then missed most of last year, including the Triple Crown, because of an injury. The colt was a model of consistency before his last-place finish in the Malibu, and will have to improve by more than 13 lengths against Diazo on Sunday.

As for Diazo, winning the first two legs of the Strub series is as difficult as winning all three. The series is limited to horses foaled four years before. Since it began in 1952, only five horses--Round Table, Hillsdale, Ancient Title, Spectacular Bid and Precisionist--have swept the races, and other than that quintet only five have put victories together in the Malibu and San Fernando.

Since Precisionist’s sweep in 1985, the only horse to win the first two races has been On The Line, in 1988. He then ran third, behind Alysheba and Candi’s Gold, in the Strub Stakes.

Horse Racing Notes

Eddie Belmonte is the last jockey to win the San Fernando in successive years. Starting in 1969, Belmonte won the stake three consecutive times, counting his dead heat with Autobiography against Triple Bend in 1972. . . . Chris McCarron, who won last year’s San Fernando with Bertrando, will be riding Zignew in the $200,000 race Sunday. . . . Bill Shoemaker, who trains Diazo, was Spectacular Bid’s jockey when they swept the Strub series in 1980. Shoemaker rode San Fernando winners eight times.

Pleasant Tango, unraced since his fifth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, is a San Fernando probable. . . . Another race on Sunday’s card is the filly division of the California Breeders’ Champion Stakes. . . . On Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Santa Anita will run the $150,000 Santa Monica Handicap for fillies and mares. . . . Winning her third in a row, Phoenician Miss rallied under Alex Solis to win Thursday’s feature by a half- length over Pro or Con’s Girl.

In Santa Anita’s three-race series for 4-year-old fillies, Mamselle Bebette, who has already won the La Brea Stakes, will run against eight rivals Saturday in the $100,000 El Encino. Mamselle Bebette, who races for John Forsythe, drew the rail, and outside her, in order, for the 1 1/16-mile race will be Island Orchid, Vinista, Sensational Eyes, Alyshena, Golden Klair, Tricky Princess, Stalcreek and Supah Gem. The series finale is the La Canada on Feb. 5. Taisez Vous swept the races in 1978, as did Mitterand in 1985.

Peteski, the Canadian horse of the year for 1993, has been retired to stud. Winless in the United States, Peteski beat Kentucky Derby winner Sea Hero and Belmont winner Colonial Affair in the Molson Million at Woodbine. A training injury resulted in Peteski being scratched from the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita in November. . . . Aqueduct, suffering from a horse shortage, is combining televised races from Gulfstream Park this season to beef up its cards. In 35-degree weather Thursday in New York, Aqueduct ran all seven of its live races, but all but one of the races in Florida, where the temperature was 80, had to be canceled when the Gulfstream jockeys voted not to ride. The riders said that the Gulfstream track was too muddy after six consecutive days of rain.